By Julie Ardery

In the Last Days of Chesapeake Oysters

editor — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:15:24 -0700

William “Bubba” Bonniville tonged for oysters in the James River off of Newport News, Virginia, circa 2003
Photo: Bryan Hatchett

June used to be the season of love for Chesapeake Bay oysters, the warmer waters setting off clouds of spawning. In former times, people avoided eating oysters during these summer (“non-R") months. Refrigeration was unreliable, and it's only right to leave procreating and infant mollusks in peace.

But this June there’s real concern that the delicious oysters from the bay may be completely disappearing in this season or any future one -- romance, R-month or no. David A. Fahrenthold's piece for the Washington Post finds that though state and federal governments have poured in $58 million since 1994 to build back the Chesapeake’s oyster beds, “official estimates show there are fewer oysters in the bay and fewer oystermen trying to catch them.” Fourteen years of effort have not worked.

A recent analysis by the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science predicts especially poor harvests of oysters, crab and rockfish this summer, due to “low oxygen conditions and blooms of harmful algae” in the Chesapeake Bay.

"The problems are coming from our backyards, our barnyards and our boat yards," says William Dennison, an environmental scientist with the University of Maryland center. "It's everything that we're doing on land that's creating the nutrient sediment input into the Bay.”

Precious Rural Resources Poured Down the Tank

editor — Mon, 9 Jun 2008 13:32:06 -0700

In dark yellow counties, gas costs are taking the biggest bite (more than 13%) of income

Map: Kevin Quealy for the New York Times, based on Oil Price Information Service, U.S. Census

Along with the social, cultural and employment pressures that siphon country youth off to cities, rural America has sprung a big new leak. Clifford Krauss's report in today's New York Times finds that rural Americans are taking a much harder hit from soaring gasoline prices.

"Nationwide, Americans are now spending about 4 percent of their take-home income on gasoline," writes Krauss. "By contrast, in some counties in the Mississippi Delta, that figure has surpassed 13 percent."

The interactive map above tells the story. In the yellow areas, concentrated in Wyoming, the Dakotas, New Mexico, Eastern Kentucky, the Mississippi Delta, and the Black Belt of Alabama, people are spending more than 13% of their income on gasoline. In Wilcox County, Alabama, 16% of income goes into the tank.

Krauss's story describes the effects: families can't pay other bills or afford meat for dinner. Workers are borrowing cars from their employers. Resturants are closing.

West Nile Virus: A Bite Out of Summer

editor — Thu, 5 Jun 2008 11:38:23 -0700

Documented cases of West Nile Virus in 2007
Source: Centers for Disease Control

One summer pest, health and wildlife officials now know, can’t be batted away. It’s going to take chemistry, public education, and even changes in the law to combat Culex tarsalis, the mosquito that carries West Nile Virus.

North Dakota is taking an especially aggressive approach. This state had the highest per capita rate of reported West Nile Virus infections last year, 369 confirmed human cases and three deaths (in 2003 there was even greater incidence of WNV – five deaths and 617 documented human cases in North Dakota). Though infection from the virus in this region usually peaks in August, the state has already begun a surveillance program. It involves monitoring residents who show West Nile’s flu-like symptoms, trapping and testing mosquitoes, testing sick horses, and reporting and testing dead birds.

This fall for the first time in 45 years, North Dakota has suspended its hunting season on the sage grouse. A count in April showed male populations of this species in Golden Valley, Slope and Bowman counties were less than half of last year’s numbers, down from 159 in 2007 to only 77 this year, the lowest number ever on record.

Freedom Rock: Veterans Memorial Times Ten

editor — Mon, 26 May 2008 19:26:10 -0700

Ray "Bubba" Sorenson's Freedom Rock, 2003, featured firefighters at the World Trade Center and Washington Crossing the Delaware
Photo: Sorenson Family via Class Brain

The 12-foot boulder isn't going anywhere. In fact nobody seems to know when or how a chunk of granite weighing 56 tons made it from the Schillberg Rock Quarry out to a spot next to Highway 25. What they do know is that the rock is magnetic now. It draws people by the thousands to this lonely place in Central Iowa each year.

Grieving friends, veterans of the Korean War, curiosity seekers, bikers from California, and tourists from Sweden -- they come by the ones and fives and, on Memorial Day, by the hundreds, to stand at Freedom Rock.

This year is the 10th anniversary of Ray (Bubba) Sorensen's patriotic tribute on the prairie. For the last decade, he's painted the huge boulder that was once a teen graffiti catcher, wrapping it with thanks to U.S. servicemen and women.

Speak Your Piece: City Voters & the Unfairer Sex

editor — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:02:08 -0700

Uncomfortable as it may make us all, it's time to own up to what the primary election results are bearing out.

City people are misogynistic. It’s not clear whether urbanites fear the idea of female leadership or (like T.S. Eliot, who was from St. Louis, by the way) they just don’t like the way women smell.

Before you call us bigoted, let’s look at the evidence.

We can start with Tuesday’s presidential primary in Kentucky. Hillary “X-Chromosome” Clinton won in every county of the state except for the core urban centers, Louisville and Lexington. Unconvinced? Okay, further proof: in Louisville (Jefferson County), which is the bigger of the two cities, Barack "Y" Obama got even more of the vote (53%) than he did in less-big Lexington (Obama winning with 51% there). We’ve heard it all our lives but have been too polite to admit it: size matters, to men and to women. And the bigger city they live in, the more terrified voters of both sexes seem to be of a female presidential candidate.